Alone with a Book

A luminous essay collection about the pleasure of reading deeply and seeing our world reflected back at us in art.

For as long as Tessa Hadley can remember, life has been made vivid by reading. The touchstones of childhood were the thrilling pages of a Ladybird book, then the sailboats in Swallows and Amazons, then the rich and immersive The Secret Garden. Reading about life seemed to enhance the textures and sensations of living: the ordinary world, with its familiar furnishings and routines and small dramas, came into focus through the stories she loved.

In these lively and incisive essays, Hadley turns to the books and the art that have animated her life, and asks what it means to connect with one book over another. Ranging across the works of Jane Austen, Henry James, Elizabeth Bowen, Alice Munro, Colm Tóibín, Daniyal Mueenuddin, and others, Hadley returns to the enduring power of realism as a craft, a joy, and a way of relating to the world, where life is made richer, deeper, and more fully imagined through fiction.